Democratic government is no longer about delivering election promises. Forget the promises. Forget even the broken promises – there are too many to list.

Election campaigns have become a fraud against the voter based on which set of deceptions punters find least objectionable. Campaigns ceased being about what is credible or affordable long ago.

Victorian voters find themselves on the cusp of going through another of these electoral charades during the weeks leading to the November 26 poll.

Eight years ago, when voters opted to bestow on Daniel Andrews (and someone called Timothy Pallas) stewardship of the state finances, Labor promised to ‘fix Victoria’s health system’ while protecting the budget’s bottom line.

Voters were invited to adjudicate whether Andrews (a former Minister for Health) could deliver on promises in public health, public hospitals, and ongoing funding for the sector. Mental health came in for particular focus.

Today, the fearsome and feared Premier prefers to talk about anything but public health.

Across the landscape of government services, no area of public administration is more shambolic than the Victorian health system. Of the Australian state health systems – Victoria’s is the sickest of them all. The consequences for the seriously ill, the aged, the mentally unwell, along with other vulnerable groups are diabolical.

Factor also that for ten of the last fifteen years Andrews has been either the Health Minister or Premier of Victoria. By now you’d think he would have produced a ‘world-class’ system other governments would wish to emulate. Forget it. Health has become a sick game of political deflection. Shifting the focus away from chronic policy failures and obscene money wasting everywhere – but especially in health – is an Andrews speciality.

Take last week’s bizarre ‘left field’ announcement regarding the privatisation of Victoria’s electricity supply system. This was not some deeply held, voter-supported policy initiative. It was solely a diversionary tactic distracting attention from existing issues that most impact long-suffering voters.

It worked for twenty-four hours until voters worked out they’d once again been taken for a ride by their exploitative and manipulative Premier. (Never mind that such a move would create another fiscal black hole on a scale eclipsing the suburban rail project’s $200 billion ‘estimated’ cost overrun.)

Andrews was appointed Minister for Heath in 2007 under the respected John Brumby administration. In the period since (including the brief term of the Baillieu government) – a thousand promises, billions of dollars spent, and one pandemic later – all key metrics of public health have gone backwards.

Public hospital waiting lists have blown out, ambulances are routinely on ‘by-pass’ during peak periods, nurses remain woefully underpaid, medical and specialist staff are quitting out of exhaustion, while chronic underfunding for maintenance of existing health infrastructure remains. This is just in metropolitan Melbourne.

The horror story of Victoria’s rural and regional public health crisis is hard to fathom. Who can blame nursing, specialist medical staff, and paramedics for searching elsewhere for fulfilling employment? Victoria – once a good place in which to get sick or to get old (or both) – can no longer lay claim to either.

The full consequences of the gruelling six pandemic lockdowns in Victoria imposed by Andrews and his notorious ‘public health‘ officials are only now surfacing.

According to a recent review of Australia’s management of the pandemic, Andrews, along with his ‘ideologically aligned‘ health bureaucrats, massively overreacted resulting in appalling familial dislocation and personal trauma for many. For the elderly in particular, the suffering was compounded by government bungling and wide-scale ineptitude.

Fault Lines – the independent review into the national response to Covid, determined some lockdowns and border closures were ‘unnecessary and the closure of school systems (as happened in Victoria) should not have occurred’.

The decision of Andrews, and other political leaders, failed the nation’s most vulnerable people, according to the distinguished authors of the review.

Daniel Andrews and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk – two of the least prudent and most arrogant centre-left state leaders in Australia – rejected the findings of the review and defended their wrong-headed and highly consequential decisions. True to form, Andrews sought to diminish the review by labelling the findings as ‘academic’.

The Andrews government, we know, is never wrong. Apologies, rare as they are, come saturated with insincerity. His political antennae and personal style leave no room for contrition or regret. He is either right on the facts or the facts themselves are wrong.

Labor and its leader dismiss what they can’t control, bat away what they don’t agree with, and routinely diminish people whom they regards as beneath him or unworthy of their attention. The leader of the opposition is a case in point. For Victoria Labor, the leader of the parliamentary opposition just doesn’t exist. The media are heavily in Labor’s pocket meaning critical analysis of policy failures and money wasting is essentially absent.

Andrews is not the ‘man of the people’ he would have you believe. He is a loner. He has advisers – but from the outside the Premier appears to repeatedly reject their advice. He highlights his ‘human side’ by patronisingly referring to himself simply as the ‘guy next door.’

Labor’s preference for micro-managed media appearances failed their leader badly during the Essendon CEO imbroglio. When asked his opinion of Andrew Thorburn’s (alleged views) on abortion and same-sex marriage – Andrews instantly flew off at the mouth bringing condemnation from many – including our most senior church leaders.

The incident served to remind voters that some political leaders simply can’t help involving themselves in every aspect of the social and cultural mosaic of society. It reminded voters that socialists like Andrews have no qualms inserting themselves into our lives. There is nothing on which Andrews doesn’t have a view – rehearsed or not.

In the Andrews orbit, ideological and tribal loyalties are everything – whether in the political or bureaucratic level of public administration. Numerous senior figures across government owe their positions to Andrews and in return offer complete party loyalty.

Over the coming weeks, Victorians will again witness every public policy lever being wrenched into place by apparatchiks. Our patience and our intelligence will come under assault while our hard-earned tax dollars will continue to disappear down one black hole after another.

Ask yourself what kind of government do Victorians deserve? One that genuinely works in the interests of all people in the state, or only Labor’s mates…